Episerver Campaign is part of a a suite of intelligent marketing automation products. It helps companies to create, automate and personalize campaigns across all channels. This includes web, mobile, email, text, social and Internet of Things.

The solution uses artificial intelligence and customer data to send and personalize content based on real-time behavior. Intelligent Campaign tracks and analyzes customer visits, click, email and purchase, to provide insights about customers and segments.

The complete Episerver Intelligent Campaigns suite includes Episerver Campaign, Episerver Reach and Episerver Insight. By reaching out to customers at exactly the right time, with exactly the right content, you can quickly increase leads, conversions and revenue.

Episerver Campaign was formerly known as Optivo® broadmail

Are you looking for an Episerver Campaign alternative for your email marketing? We listed some Episerver Campaign alternatives.

Mailkit

Mailkit is a data-oriented marketing automation platform with dynamic content, intelligent targeting,…
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Ternair software

Ternair Software supplies enterprise marketing automation and database marketing software for the Dutch…
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Moosend recently released a new RSS to Email feature. This allows marketers and content creators to quickly set up digests and newsletters. (and it works with products and promotions as well.)

If you are a blogger or regular publisher, email marketing is a good way to drive traffic and conversions. Many newsletters are built out of blog posts – or at least have several of them in there. So primarily the RSS feature is a big time saver.

Most of us might not want to send out a new email with every new blogpost, so the email marketing system includes the option to schedule RSS campaigns and create an email digest with the latest news, updates and posts.

With the RSS scheduler, brands, bloggers and publishers can send on their own frequency. Say a weekly or monthly email with a roundup / email digest.

You can set the scheduler up to get a confirmation email every time an email dispatch is complete. At least you know when a new digest is sent,

WordPress newsletter sending

RSS to email works with any type of site as long as you have a published RSS feed. Many content or commerce platforms have this feature built in. for instance it works with creating automated emailings from:• WordPress,• Medium,• Blogspot,• E-commerce platforms,• Any type of platform that has an RSS feed, really.

Newsletter Editor RSS Blocks

The RSS based content automatically detects title, images, content and links. You can do a single email campaign based on that – or use the email editor RSS block / container and inject the latest posts into your template.

Users can style the newsletter template, to fit their branding. When adding the RSS block, dynamic elements show up that are all customizable. They behave like any piece in the drag and drop responsive email editor.

Similarly to the RSS feature, senders can also point to a campaign which is not RSS based, but rather a webpage. This can be handy for brands that publish their campaigns to web publically. Or if you find it easier to push the content to Moosend in that way instead of manually loading it into the Email marketing system.

The Repeatables feature, as they call it, picks up the content after pointing to the web url of the campaign and setting a publishing schedule.

Availability and pricing

The RSS-to-email feature in Moosend is already available for all existing and new users. The feature is part of the main platform and at no extra costs. Moosend starts at a free 3-month trial that has unlimited sends and campaigns up to 5K unique subscribers.

AI is getting a lot of attention in marketing. What the best AI category for email personalisation?

Tools and techniques will largely depend on your own email marketing strategy.In this article, we’ll look closer at the three key AI techniques that can help you improve the results from your email marketing program.

The opportunities that AI brings for email marketing

Did you that according to RJ Metricsknow the top 1% of your shoppers are worth 18 times more than the average shopper?

This amazing stat begs two questions for retail marketers:1: How can retail marketers engage the top 1% more effectively?2: And how can marketers engage all consumers to convert them to top shoppers?

Happily, there are immediate steps brands can take to improve revenues and customer lifetime value. In the past few years, a trifecta of powerful computing, big data, and machine learning have triggered a big shakeup in personalisation.

Why has AI-based personalisation suddenly become so important? Because it works:

At Netflix, more than 80 per cent of the TV shows people watch are discovered through the platform’s recommendation system

Personalisation is now a critical issue. And yet, email marketing often still operates with legacy technologies and segment-driven campaigns. According to E-consultancy, just 17% of brands and 21% of agencies are innovating with artificial intelligence to create personalisation at scale. So there are currently opportunities for marketers to differentiate themselves through an AI strategy.

For retailers and e-commerce brands, personalisation technologies are all about understanding the customer so the product sells itself. Think about our examples from the retail and entertainment industries. From Spotify suggesting a playlist to Amazon recommending products to buy, they first understand each consumer’s tastes then curate content for that consumer.

A Spotify-style consumer taste profile, as applied in email personalisation

Today, shoppers demand relevance and personalisation in order to remain engaged. Statista found that the more personalised the email, the higher the email open and click-through rates. However, when we talk about hyper-personalisation, we’re going beyond the “Dear Emily,” intro and even beyond personalisation per audience segment. Nowadays, data-savvy marketers are using AI to adapt content for each unique consumer.

Nobody phrases it this way, but machine learning in retail is primarily a marketing issue. It’s really an attempt to understand the consumer so we can serve them better.

The 3P key techniques of AI in email personalisation

AI techniques can be used to achieve multiple goals. So the best AI email personalisation technique will largely depend on your email marketing strategy.

Email marketers can use the 3P’s of key AI techniques, namely:

Profile-based personalisation

Product-based personalisation

Predictive Analytics

1. AI for Profile-based email personalisation

Great for newsletters and other campaigns to large audiences

There’s a trend toward more in-depth recommendation systems online. Spotify and Netflix have refined their recommendation engines to create more meaningful engagement with their customers through hyper-personalisation.

For example, Spotify provides each individual listener with a tailored and personalised selection of songs, and while automated recommendations aren’t new, Spotify’s complex algorithm isn’t just based on a user’s saved songs; it builds a taste profile of each user ’s musical tastes.

These entertainment brands have raised consumer expectations. Now retailers must also provide each shopper with curated content – not just based on a user’s last click or purchase, but delve much deeper into their shopping tastes.

Profile-based personalisation is particularly suited to email newsletter personalisation for the following reasons:

1. Results tend to be highly relevant. Because profile-based AI relies on each consumers ‘taste profile’, they are likely to be highly relevant to a consumer’s interests. This makes profile-based AI especially valuable for organisations with lots of products and lots of consumers (think retailers, e-commerce and travel brands).

2. Encourage product discovery. Another advantage of this technique is that email marketers can use the shoppers taste profile to encourage browsing and shopping – even when the shopper doesn’t have a discernible need. By continually showing fresh and relevant content, email marketers can maximise product discovery and revenues.

3. Marketers can get started quickly. Profile-based personalisation avoids the cold-start problem that often bedevils product-to-product recommendation technologies.

While the technology still requires some initial data to begin making recommendations, the quality of those early recommendations is likely to be higher than with a platform that only becomes statistically valid after millions of data points have been added and correlated.

Recommender systems have the effect of guiding shoppers in a personalised way to interesting products in a large space of potential product recommendations.

Profile-based AI systems recommend products based on the attributes of products a given shopper has liked in the past. A profile-based recommender matches the attributes of each shopper’s tastes and preferences, with the attributes of products, to recommend new and interesting items to the shopper.

So for email newsletters, profile-based personalisation is typically the better option. It creates a nuanced picture of every shopper’s preferences, so the marketer can precisely tailor email content to every subscriber’s individual tastes.

2. AI for product-based email personalisation

Great for purchase confirmation triggers and other behavioural campaigns)

Product-based AI is based on the relationship between different products, with no information about the consumers required at all! All you need is a correlation between all of your products.

In marketing, product-based AI is excellent for cross-selling in behavioural campaigns such as purchase confirmation triggers. Users are shown matching or additional products. Amazon is the market leader in this type of AI personalisation.

Early on, Amazon realised that with the right product recommendations, customers buy more stuff.

You can see as a many as five different types of product-based AI personalisation at various points in the Amazon purchasing process

‘Frequently bought together.’

‘Customers who viewed this item also viewed’.

‘What do customers buy after viewing this item?’

‘Customers who bought this item also bought.’

‘Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations.’

3. Predictive analytics

Great for nudging people into action, e.g. preventing churn

Predictive analytics uses historical data, statistical models, and AI to predict the marketing strategies that are most probable to be successful. Predictive analytics includes lots of techniques such as automatic winner selection and next best action.

Sounds terrific – so how does predictive analytics help your marketing strategy and tactics?

For example, regression analysis uncovers any correlation between shopper’s previous behaviours to assess the likelihood of future purchase behaviour.

Predictive analysis can also identify dissatisfied consumers who are likely to churn and to identify consumers who are ready to purchase. Analysing customer data in predictive analysis can predict behaviour and help inform your marketing strategy.

Getting started with AI for email marketing is easier than you think

Deploying AI in your email marketing solution isn’t complicated. It doesn’t need any knowledge of Data Science. New AI-based software platforms are now available – even for businesses that lack maturity when it comes to machine learning.

Because AI is still a new field, it is often best to begin with a Proof of Concept (POC). The POC is designed to prove that the AI actually delivers on your defined marketing objectives.

The POC is used as a pilot program to test a vendor’s technology in an operational environment, for an agreed timeframe. The purpose is to test the AI with your data and use it on a day-to-day operational basis.

Start with a list of possible POCs that align with your marketing KPIs. When you have a list of options, rank them in order of business impact, weighted if necessary, for ease-of-implementation. Then pick the top POC, and keep the remainder for future implementation. Importantly, aim to deliver early successes to build confidence and momentum.

Be sure to choose a vendor that has true AI, not merely a rules-based decisioning platform, which is impossible to scale for the volume of data and combinations of interactions that marketers are managing today. Also, be sure to choose a vendor who understands your industry vertical and who can integrate with your existing technology partners.

The time for AI-based personalisation is now

Personalisation is becoming an essential component of online marketing. This is not only because companies feel under pressure from their competition and have to continually work to stand out from the competition, but also because of shoppers’ raised expectations.

The increased competitive landscape demands that brands consider how to use AI to ‘surprise and delight’ shoppers on an individualised basis. The same data used by brands today can also be used by AI to create unique, relevant, and timely messaging for each individual shopper, not a targeted segment.

With the world’s biggest brands like Spotify, Netflix, Amazon and Google betting big on AI personalisation, we are getting closer to a day where all our email personalisation will be handled by AI.

About Peter Duffy

Peter Duffy is an email marketing and data guy. Peter accidentally helped give birth to his son on the kitchen floor. CEO of Mercanto. By knowing each shopper’s preferences across multiple sessions and transactions, Mercanto determines the best content for each individual shopper. This maximises relevance for shoppers and boosts revenue for brands.

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Customer Data Platforms are getting a lot of attention amongst data-driven marketers. If you are not familiar with the CDPs, the important points to know is that they ingest customer data from many source systems and combine it into a unified customer database that is open for use and connects to other systems.

Originally CDPs are intended to be run largely by marketing departments with less need for IT support.

As such CDPs have a great deal to offer and that might explain the buzz. Leaves you to wonder, how big is this industry now? David Raab Founder and CEO of Customer Data Platform Institute just published a market research on the CDP Industry in Europe, so we grabbed the opportunity to look into that and ask his views.

CDP Market growth and local vendors

From a buyer’s perspective, the most interesting stat from the EU CDP industry report, may be the absolute number of local vendors available. We found 25 Europe-based CDP vendors, nearly one-third of the worldwide total. Marketers in UK, France, or The Netherlands can each pick from a half dozen vendors based in their country.

This matters because markets still have considerable national differences. I suspect that many buyers prefer to work with a local firm, especially for customer-facing functions such as personalization where knowledge of local buyers is important.

Buyers may also be interested in the market growth rate:

The number of European vendors doubled, from 13 to 25 during 2018.

Employment at CDP vendors grew by 58% from 929 to 1,469.

Cumulative funding grew by just 16%, suggesting that most growth is self-funded.

The total revenue among these vendors is estimated at €150 million in 2018. Revenue in Europe for non-European vendors is probably about equal to this.

What are the different CDP types?

It might be good to first illustrate the three categories of CDPs we differenciate in the report. The image below shows the incremental scope of Data Access, Analytics and Campaign CDPs. Note that there are even great variations among vendors within each category.

Data Access type CDPThese systems gather customer data from source systems, link data to customer identities, and store the results in a persistent database available to external systems. This is the minimum set of functions required to meet the definition of a CDP. Systems in this category often employ specialized technologies for data management and access. Many began as tag management or Web analytics vendors and have considerable legacy business in those areas.

Campaign type CDPThese systems provide data assembly, analytics, and customer treatments. These treatments may be personalized messages, real time interactions, product or content recommendations, outbound marketing campaigns, customer journey orchestration, or other contacts. What distinguishes them from segmentation is they also specify the message to be delivered.

CDP Name

Country

Category

Advalo

France

campaign

Audiens

Netherlands

analytics

BlueVenn

UK

campaign

Boxever

Ireland

campaign

Camp de Bases

France

campaign

Celebrus

UK

access

CommandersAct

France

access

ContactLab

Italy

campaign

CrossEngage

Germany

campaign

Datatrics

Netherlands

campaign

Eulerian

France

analytics

Fospha

UK

campaign

IntentHQ

UK

campaign

Invicta

Netherlands

campaign

Jahia / Unomi

Switzerland

campaign

LeadBoxer

Netherlands

analytics

NGDATA

Belgium

analytics

Nominow

Netherlands

campaign

Omnisient

South Africa

access

Piwik Pro

Poland

campaign

PRDCT

Netherlands

analytics

RedEye

UK

campaign

Splio

France

campaign

UniFida

UK

campaign

Ysance

France

access

What are the CDP differences from country to country?

It’s a bit hard to say about country differences because there are probably quite a few firms we don’t know about. For example, I’m aware of only one German CDP, which just seems very unlikely. And although our figures show that Netherlands-based companies are especially small, the reason could simply be that we have been more exposed in The Netherlands than elsewhere and thus are more likely to learn about small companies in that market.

The differences between EU and the World are clearer. Seventy percent of European CDP employees work at companies with campaign-type systems, meaning they can select messages for individuals in batch campaigns or one-on-one interactions. Just 43% of employees outside of Europe work at similar firms.

The domination of the European industry by campaign type Customer Data Platforms is its most distinctive feature. I suspect that European marketers prefer campaign systems because European marketers have fewer technical resources than their counterparts in the U.S.

Campaign systems help European marketers stretch their budgets because they include a broader range of features than other types of CDPs, reducing the need for additional products.

Here is a list of the european CDP vendors included in the report. With the country of origin and CDP type.

Are there other differences beyond campaign type?Yes. European CDP companies are much smaller and less well-funded than those outside of Europe: the average European company has 59 employees and €6 million funding, while the average company elsewhere has 99 employees and €25 million funding.

Averages can be deceiving but other measures tell a similar story. For example, only one of the ten largest CDPs is based in Europe compared with five of the ten smallest. The difference is actually greater than this suggests because most of the large European CDPs are old companies – four of the six with over 100 employees were founded before 2006.

By contrast, just one of the fourteen non-European vendors with over 100 employees is that old. This means that the largest European CDPs built their business doing something else – mostly as marketing services agencies — while the largest non-European CDPs were CDPs from the start. (You’d need to look at the data in our global industry update, available here, for the non-European information.)

CDP trends to predict the future

We assemble this data every six months so we get a good perspective on changes over time. The European CDP industry had been growing slightly faster than the rest of the world but in the recent period that was not the case: the European share of employment actually fell slightly.

Another trend that had been clear was the steady shift of industry away from access vendors towards campaign vendors. But that also slowed during the most recent period and actually reversed outside of Europe, where analytics vendors gained share. This reversal suggests that different types of CDPs are finding success among different customer groups.

The industry is not going to coalesce around a small number of vendors with similar features any time soon. That is different from the path that most industries take, where a dominant model and few leaders do tend to emerge fairly quickly.

Data on industry concentration points in a similar direction: the share of employment among the top five vendors has fallen steadily over the past two years, and even the share of the top 20% of vendors (a number that increases as the industry grows) fell in the most recent period.

Overall, the report shows a vibrant, innovative European CDP industry that continues to grow by taking approaches that fit the special conditions of the European marketplace. U.S.-based firms, with much higher funding and a substantial technical head start, will not leave the market any time soon. But because the non-European firms are strongest in the data access and analytics categories, we see both sets of vendors coexisting and often even being used for different purposes within the same company.

Readers can download the European report here.

About David Raab

David Raab is CEO and Founder of the Customer Data Platform Institute www.cdpinstitute.org an organization that educates marketers about customer data management and technology. Mr. Raab has a long history as a marketing technology industry consultant and analyst. He coined the term Customer Data Platform in 2013.

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The perils of “too much tech” can be felt through every business that is dealing with the issue right now. Most marketing organizations use 6-10 different tools on a daily basis, and this presents a lot of issues.

Email marketers are starting to think more holistically over the past couple of years. But how can you build a consolidated tech stack?

I have seen the question for email marketers steadily start to change from ‘What ESP do I need’ to ‘how does email fit into my overall marketing strategy’ and ‘how can I consolidate ALL my marketing technology for greater efficiency and scale?’

Moving to a consolidated MarTech stack selection process

Marketing teams are starting to move away from knee-jerk tech buying – and are choosing and implementing technology DIFFERENTLY than before:

Instead of choosing a tech vendor because the competition did, marketers choose the tech that best meets their unique needs.

Instead of implementing multiple point solutions to account for separate customer touchpoints or channels, marketers are adopting holistic platforms and becoming channel agnostic

Instead of choosing tech based on which tactics they want to accomplish, we’re in the early stages of more marketing teams thinking more strategically – outlining their objectives first – then finding the tool that can be a catalyst in achieving them

With email as the digital ID, consolidating your tech stack can yield many benefits. By consolidating your stack, you can create a single source of truth – a centralized repository of data from which more encompassing, personalized marketing campaigns can be created and executed.

The associated risks of tech stack turmoil include:* The introduction of inefficiencies,* Additional (licence and maintenance) costs,* MarTech bottlenecks that create an inability to run the campaigns you want or get the insights you need.

It can be overlooked that even a simple app download introduces a higher level of risk. Many marketers haven’t realized that inflated MarTech stacks and Shadow IT pose serious security risks for cyber attacks and data breaches.

3 steps to a consolidated MarTech stack selection process

Today I am going a step further than describing the risks and necessity of tech consolidation. Here is a proposed 3-step process that you can take to select a consolidated tech stack and how a consolidated MarTech environment should look.

Step 1: Form a good working relationship with your IT team

A first step if you want to consolidate existing tech is to form an internal alliance with your IT department. Facilitating this partnership with the internal technology experts is crucial.

It’s time for marketers to face the music: it’s easy and tempting to bring in new technologies without going through any formal processes. But too often, this vicious cycle leads to more buying and breaking than betterment. Intuitively, marketing teams know this – most aren’t tech implementation specialists or integration managers. They aren’t schooled in how to vet technology vendors or pick from a slew of potential solutions.

Your IT team should lead the new-tech charge, and they’ll be able to lend a technical perspective on how well this new solution will jive with your existing systems, whether it’s safe, and if it will actually make your marketing team more efficient. After all, they are the experts on technology and truly should be leveraged as an ally in any digital transformation or implementation.

That’s the first (often overlooked!) step. Next, you’ll want to look at what you actually want to achieve and how email can sit at the core.

Step 2: Outline objectives, move to strategies, then to tactics… and finally tech

Marketing Technology is both the biggest enabler and biggest distraction facing marketing today. Managing MarTech remains a challenge, and maximizing marketing effectiveness is the elusive end goal everyone is striving toward.

The secret to success is tech consolidation – and this will not be taught in school or shown in any new job orientation – as well as beginning with objectives, not the technology.

The paradox is that the vast majority of software companies want you to start with their tech as the first step in your strategy. This underscores the focus on features and functionality we see in MarTech demos, on their websites, everywhere.

When looking to bring on a new technology, the salesperson might ask you, “So, what are you looking for in a new vendor, and how are you hoping our tech will help you do that?” And in most scenarios, the answer ranges from a general “better email engagement” to a more specific “I want an abandoned cart workflow to get more purchases.”

This is a chief cause of confusion. Better email engagement and abandoned cart programs aren’t objectives. The first is a strategy, and the second is a tactic, two things you might use to achieve a larger objective like customer retention.

To get back to a position where we can satisfy the multi-dimensional demands flying our way (and get back to strategy and creativity), we’ll need to counter this mainstream mode of thinking headfirst.

The flawed martech process we’ve been conditioned to accept flows like this:

1. Technology (what can the tech do?)2. Tactics (what cool stuff can I do with the tech?)3. Strategy (how can this tech align with our strategy?)4. Goals (can this be a bridge to help me reach my goals?)

This is all backwards… and goes against the foundations of Marketing ‘101’, but seem to have been forgotten in the face of mass digital distraction.

Here’s how we should all think about our marketing strategies:

1. Start with Goals (what do we need to achieve?)2. Move to Strategy (How are we going to get there?)3. Consider Tactics (what actions/activities will get us there?)4. Look at Technology (what software can help us achieve these?)

In this new pattern of thinking, we’re suddenly free. We’re not trapped by what software can do, but empowered to find software that helps us get what we need to get done.

Once we land on the solution to our goals, that particular software should actually tell us how to achieve our goals with strategies and tactics that have worked before.

Step 3: Find a partner that can be an ally in achieving your strategy

Choosing the right partner (and working with your IT team to do so) is the very last step in the process once your strategy and objectives are defined.

This final step in consolidation of tech means actually doing. And doing requires an evaluation of everything you’re currently using, and making an educated determination about what you’re not going to continue on with – and ultimately choosing the right partner(s) who can help you achieve your goals.

Here’s where the hard work of research will pay off. The biggest thing that you should look for is a system that starts with email at the center, and which can support multiple other channels as needed.

Above all, seek out a unified marketing platform that:

Offers a centralized “source of truth” so you can consolidate and unify your customer data that had been scattered among multiple systems

Gives you a single, unified view of each customer so that you can effectively segment and personalize communications

Allows you to create an omnichannel experience and then analyze and draw insights about how your marketing is performing

Has been “home grown”, or developed by the vendor itself. “Acquired clouds” can deliver similar headaches as a home-grown tech stack, but going with an all-in-one system allows you to become more flexible and secure in your integrations

Include automation and analytics across channelsMake sure your tech stack supports your automation and analytics, as well as all the channels you work within. CDP or customer data platforms are so hot, because they seem to be a possible answer to this challenge, but tackling it at the (MarTech) root seems a more logical thing to do.

Omni-channel campaigns are a must in today’s digital world. Email is vital, but how does the system work to incorporate mobile (SMS and in-app messaging), website (personalized content widgets, overlays, etc.), and social media (retargeting) and tie all these back to email?

Make sure every channel you need can “communicate” with one another so everything you do works together to offer a connected customer experience in the end.

Conclusion: Consolidate your marketing technology

Consolidation of marketing technology will help in every area – internally in the areas of efficiency, productivity, production, quality, and time management to external benchmarks like retention, personalization, order value, and revenue.

The ultimate goal in consolidating all your disparate technology is to unify everything around email and therefore eliminate unnecessary redundancies, inefficiencies, and disparate systems.

Consolidation of your tech stack is one of the most impactful activities you can begin looking at this year and beyond.

About Lindsay Tjepkema

Lindsay Tjepkema is Marketing Director, Americas at Emarsys and host of the Marketer + Machine podcast. She and her team deliver resources that empower marketers to seek out solutions and strategies that will allow them to focus on what they love – strategy, content, and creative – not technology. Although her true love is tech marketing, Lindsay’s experience is built on time spent leading in-house teams, in agency settings, and independently running her own marketing consultancy.

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About Mailgun

Mailgun is a developer-focused email delivery platform. These are otherwise called email relay, or SMTP services. Companies can use Mailgun to send, receive, and track transactional and marketing emails through an API.

Mailgun was founded in 2010, from Y-Combinator and later acquired by Rackspace. From February 2017, Mailgun became a standalone business again. Focused on building their email deliverability solutions.

Headquartered in San Antonio with remote teams in San Francisco and Austin. Brands and platforms like Slack, Lyft, Github, and Reddit use Mailgun as their email delivery service.

Mailgun alternative

Are you looking for an Mailgun alternative for your email marketing? We listed some Mailgun alternatives.

Mailjet

Mailjet is a powerful email service provider that ensures maximum insight and deliverability results…
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Ongage

Ongage is the first email marketing front-end platform that connects to multiple Email providers, ESPs…
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Sparkpost

SparkPost is one of the biggest global SMTP email relay and email delivery services.
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ExpertSender is a registered ESPC, EEC and MAAWG member and was rated the world’s best segmentation among mid-market ESPs by Red Pill Email Vendor Selection Guide.

ExpertSender focuses on providing marketing solutions for customers from around the globe and have offices in the USA, France, Spain, Poland, Russia, China and Brazil. They send over 15 billion email messages per year. Their team of experts help accommodate the needs of contemporary marketers.

Automation
Automate customer life cycles and create real-world business scenarios which will help lead your customers down their desired path.

Segmentation

ExpertSender’s segmentation was voted the best among email providers globally. If you’ve got the data, you’ll be able to segment it any way you please. If you’re a business user or a SQL veteran, they’ll have you covered.

Deliverability

ExpertSender are experts in deliverability and can help with anything related to inbox placement with the most popular ISPs. They are able to advise you on problems with black listing, IP warming, IP volume balancing, throttle rates with specific ISPs and IP-routing.

Personalization

The ExpertSender platform offers unlimited personalization capabilities with dynamic content. Just store your customer data within custom fields or more complex data within data tables and you can start sending real one-to-one campaigns right away.

Integrations

ExpertSender have a number of integrations with eCommerce platforms, recommendation engines and analytics platforms. These include: Magento, PrestaShop, SoftCube, SaveCart, IgnitionOne and Vivom. Need integration with another platform? Ask them or make use of their robust API.

With the right strategy, tactics, and software you can build a lead generation machine that works to expand your reach and grow your business. You know, everyone’s goal.

Fortunately, lead generation software is not reserved only for fortune 100 companies. There are plenty of affordable lead generation tools to help you catch those leads and subscribers.

The only problem is sifting through the massive amount of software available. Search Google – you’ll get thousands of hits. We spent hours finding, narrowing down, testing, and categorizing 75 of the best lead generation tools you can use to grow your business.

It’s important to note that a tool is only half the battle. Your lead generation efforts may be limited (or enhanced) based on what industry you’re in. Real estate has the lowest conversion rates while business consulting has the highest conversion rate.

Here’s are the types of lead generation tools so you can quickly move around the article.Jump to:Lead capture toolsEmail prospecting/lookup toolsEmail outreach/followupEmail marketing automation toolsLive chatLanding page creatorsMeeting Scheduler AppsCustomer research and survey toolsContent marketing tools

For each of the lead generation tools, there’s a detailed description and a bit of extra information to help you make an informed decision.

It’s important to note that a tool is only half the battle. Your lead generation efforts may be limited (or enhanced) based on what industry you’re in. Real estate has the lowest conversion rates while business consulting has the highest conversion rate.

Keep this in mind when you set expectations about the lead generation tools you choose.

What to look for in all lead generation tools.

Before we get into the thick of it, I just want to quickly run through what you simply need to consider for each type of lead generation tool.

1. Ease of useIt should not take more than a few hours to learn and understand the lead generation tool you’ve chosen. Also, it shouldn’t force you to rearrange your entire workflow.I’ll admit, there are some exceptions to this rule like some sales tools are made to become the core of your workflow.

2. Ease of implementationYou also shouldn’t need a developer to get value out of the tool you chose. That’s a big red flag. Setup should take, at most, a few minutes.Those are really the only two factors written in stone. Other categories of tools have different needs as well.

Lead Capture Tools

Every business loves to have more high quality leads, am I right? Lead capture software is built to turn the web traffic into leads and subscribers. They capture leads using different methods like popups, surveys, quizzes and polls. It’s the bridge between website traffic and a thriving business.You’re able to capture those leads and follow up with sales tools or email marketing automation tools.

What to look for in lead capture tools

There are many criteria you can use to evaluate whether lead capture software is a good fit for you.

1. Integration optionsAnother important consideration is whether or not the software integrates with your current marketing stack. Will it seamlessly send lead data to your CRM or ESP?If they don’t have the integration are they responsive to your requests to add new ones?

2. Feature setDoes the software do what you need it to? This is the first question on the minds of most people who buy lead capture software.It’s a valid question.Of course, you may need more features in your particular situation. That’s perfectly alright.

3. ReportingThe reports need to be good enough for you to make data backed decisions.Are the reports accurate? I once used a piece of list building software (it won’t be named) that captured roughly half my conversions. The contacts that showed up in my ESP were for the lead magnet I was promoting were more than what we reported.

Once I figured it out, I got rid of the software as soon as possible.

4. CostCost is always a consideration when you want to buy software for your business. Assuming you know your numbers, the cost associated with lead capture software is negligible. When you know your numbers, you can put a value on each lead. Say it is worth $5. If your lead capture tools bring in 100 new leads that’s a value of $500 to your business which makes it a profit center as opposed to costs.In fact, most conversion optimization tools yield at least 2x ROI.

1. KyLeads

Kyleads – smart popups and beautiful quizzes for lead generation – is lead capture software that allows you to create popups and quizzes to turn a larger number of website visitors into subscribers and leads. Kyleads combines standard popups with high performing quizzes which have an average conversion rate above 30%.

You can create:

Lightbox popups

Slide-ins

Floating bar

Inline embed forms

Mobile only forms

Full screen takeover

Both the quiz builder and the popup builder are easy to understand so you don’t have to spend hours learning new software.

The targeting options give you the ability to make better messages for your visitors. Select from page level, timed, URL parameter and others. It’s embeddable on most website platforms like WordPress, Shopify, and Wix to name a few. Just copy your form or quiz embed code and paste it where you want it to appear.

Kyleads integrates with the major email marketing software providers. One of the most useful features is the ability to segment new leads based on their answers. You can add them to specific lists or tags in your email marketing software.

KyLeads has straightforward split testing. Split testing lets you run different forms head-to-head at the same time, so you can pick the best version. The lead capture reporting options allow you to understand more than just views and generated leads – you can also see quiz starts, completions, and which questions were answered. It’s more of a lead generation platform that combines multiple software options.

KyLeads starts with a 7-day free trial then $39/m.

Special offer for readers of EmailVendorSelection.com. Get 25% off any KyLeads plan for life. To claim your lifetime discount, visit this page. You should be up and running in less than five minutes.

2. Hellobar

Hellobar – converting more visitors into customers – is an old staple in the lead capture space. They have the features you’d expect in this type of list building tool. In addition to the ability to collect email addresses, it also allows you to funnel traffic to specific pages, talk to visitors, make announcements, and promote your social channels.

It has a neat feature which makes the submit button shake to draw attention.

You can create:

Lightbox popups

Full screen takeover

Floating bar

Slide-ins

Announcements

They have a few tested templates and a feature called “leading question” which lets you add a starting question before the opt-in form. Be sure to choose the right question because it shows a popup afterwards no matter what your visitors answer. For example, if you ask “do you want exclusive tips?” They’ll still get a popup after answering no.

Hellobar integrates with the major email marketing services and Zapier so you’ll be able to pass the contact information where it needs to go. They have direct integrations with WordPress and Wix. Other integrations are done through inserting a code snippet.

It uses a freemium model with no credit card. The paid tiers start at $29/m

3. Poptin

Poptin – simple popups to generate more leads – is lead capture software that focuses on making different types of popups for lead generation. They market themselves as a solution to reduce ecommerce shopping cart abandonment as well as a way to grow your email list.

The types of popups you can create are:

Modal forms

Floating bars

Slide-ins

Full screen

Mobile only

With each of the popups, you can choose between exit intent, scroll percentage, timed display, and after clicking a link. The reporting is simple but gives you the information you need to make informed decisions which includes views, contacts, and conversion rates of each form.

They integrate with the most popular email marketing services, so your leads can be followed up as soon as the data is pushed to your ESP. An interesting feature of Poptin is built-in AI. If you’re not sure about your targeting you can turn on the AI and it’ll test different targeting options until they land on the highest converting one for your website.

They use a freemium model with no credit card required. Paid plans start at $19/m

4. Leadquizzes

There is a large library of quiz templates. You can start with a template and customize to fit your needs. You can send the leads to your email marketing provider using native integrations or Zapier.

With the Zapier integration, you can apply specific tags to users based on how they answered questions. The drawback is that you need a premium Zapier subscription to make that work properly.

Leadquizzes has basic and advanced reporting tied to the different pricing tiers. The same is true for customization options, you only get the full software when you upgrade to a higher tier.

They use a freemium model with no credit card. Paid plans start at $22/m.

5. Interact

Interact is another lead capture tool that focuses on making interactive quizzes. They’ve been around for a number of years and it shows in the maturity of the app.

There are three types of quizzes available:

Personality

Scored

Assessment

There are hundreds of templates, making it easy to start with a quiz that’ll be relevant to your audience. Their customization options give you the ability to change most of the elements of your quiz so it looks and feels like your brand. You can change the background colors, start image, fonts, add your logo, and more.

In addition to the standard quiz features, you’re able to add logic branching to give a better quiz experience. Interact can be tried as freemium. The paid plans start at $29/m.

6. Wisepops

Wisepops is list building software, to create intelligent website popups. They’ve been around for roughly five years and built a solid product.

They have a large ecosystem of integrations and have most of the popups you’d expect from a tool that’s been on the market for the last few years.

Marketers can create:

Lightbox popups

Slide-in popups

Full screen popups

Floating bars

Mobile only popups

Wisepops focusses on Ecommerce but can also be effective for gathering leads for any type of brand. The simple interface and targeting options make this a good choice if you’re looking for just popups. But it’s much pricier than other comparable leadgen tools.

It comes with a 14 day free trial – then plans start at $49/m.

7. Privy

Privy started as a tool to help brick and mortar stores track online conversions. When they couldn’t find traction, they pivoted to online lead capture software with an emphasis on helping Ecommerce stores grow their email list.

They’re one of the few lead capture solutions with a true drag-and-drop editor.

With Privy, you can create:

Lightbox popups

Floating bars

Spin to win popups

Slide-ins

Banners

Inline embeds

Call outs (Looks like a chat widget)

Privy also provides simple landing pages to help you capture more leads. Personally, I’d use a dedicated landing page builder. The landing pages are quite basic, but can get the job done if you don’t have any other option.

They use a freemium pricing model. Paid plans start at $24/m.

8. Sumo – lead capture

Sumo is a lead capture tool that’s bundled with (social) share buttons and is billed as the easiest way to turn visitors into Ecommerce customers.

They also have a limited autoresponder, browser push notifications, and discount codes. They previously had more tools in there, but removed many of them. with their pivot to serving ecommerce stores better, they

With the Sumo app, you can create:

Lightbox popups

Inline embedded lead capture forms

Full screen popups (called welcome mat)

Floating bar

Multiple targeting options make it possible to get granular with who sees your messages. For example, you can set popups to only appear for certain referrers or people who’ve visited a certain number of pages.Reporting gives a quick snapshot of how you forms are doing. By default, you can see last weeks’ data. With premium plans, you can unlock monthly, lifetime, and custom date ranges.

Sumo offers a fairly standard product that works on most websites. They operate on a freemium model with paid plans starting at $29/m.

09. Optimonk

Optimonk is an interesting onsite targeting and lead capture platform with. They started in 2014 with just exit intent forms. But now they have a more powerful tool.

In addition to lead capture, marketers can collect feedback, create surveys, add dynamic text replacement, and promote social sharing. They emphasize Ecommerce (why is everyone so interested in Ecommerce?)

Reduce cart abandonment by showing exit intent popups and offers related to items inside the cart. Once you’re comfortable with their drag and drop editor, customization is simple and straightforward. Targeting gives you the ability to send the right messages to people based on their behavior, referral source, and many other factors.

With the core lead capture tool you can create:

Lightbox popups

Floating bar

Sidebar form

Spin the wheel

Optimonk has a 14-day free trial and paid plans start at $29/m.

10. Outgrow

Outgrow takes a different approach to lead capture. Where most of the email list building tools in this review focus mostly on popups, they don’t have popups at all.

Instead, they use quizzes, polls, assessments, recommendations, and calculators to help their customers generate leads. I like the polls and calculators most. If you have a business that’s highly customizable – like app or web development – this is a way to segment and qualify leads before you start your follow up.

They have a straightforward builder that lets you build the interactive content quickly. Outgrow also has a large integration ecosystem so you can send your lead data to your other pieces of MarTech like CRM or Marketing automation tools.

A major challenge with Outgrow is the way they limit their paid plans. In the first tier, you only have access to quizzes and almost no support. According to reviewers, a lot of their templates are for sale instead of freely available to customers.

They offer a 7-day free trial. First tier paid plans start at $22/m for quizzes only.

11. Optinmonster

Optinmonster is a well-known email capture tool that focuses on providing popups for SMBs. They market themselves as an Ecommerce solution as well as a way to grow your email list.

This monster comes with a wide range of targeting features out of the box. A/B testing and display options are there to help you capture more leads.

The lead capture form customization allows you to get the right look and feel for your forms.

With their software, you can create:

Full screen popups

Lightbox popups

Inline embeds

Floating bar

Slide-in popups

Sidebar forms

This was the first software I used that allowed to create popups that opened based on clicking a link. At the time, that was a game changer.

They don’t offer a free trial; instead, they have a 14-day money back guarantee. Prices start at $229/year (no monthly option).

12. Justuno

Justuno is an email lead capture platform or “conversion rate optimisation suite”. You can use them to turn your current website visitors in to registered subscribers and leads. But also to serve banner promotions, Countdown timers and are especially good in using ecommerce data to segment and show the right promotions.

Their emphasis is on popups and collecting the data to send better messages across your website. With that end in mind, you can A/B test variations of your popups and offers.They have a limited range of popup types when compared to their competitors.

You can create the following lead capture types:

Floating bar

Lightbox popups

Slide-ins

Contest popups

Though they only have a few popup types, they have pr-ebuilt templates and direct integrations with Ecommerce platforms such as Shopify. They take the data from the Ecommerce integration and generate popups to nudge your (known) visitor to action. You can target promotions to users based on their activity and even current cart value.

It’s free up to 5.000 site visitors a month, paid plans start at $19/m.

13. Listagram

Listagram is a specialized lead capture tool. What makes it specialized? It only offers one kind of popup – spin to win gamification.

An interesting feature of Listagram is the ability to monitor your conversion rates across different devices.

The only issue I find with this lead capture software is the fact that they only have one type of popup. It’s the best lead capture tool for what it does but the focus on just spin to win is too narrow for my taste.

What if I don’t want to give discounts to my subscribers or don’t have a prize to offer? Will that prevent me from using this tool? In addition, there’s a real chance to attract lower quality customers that’re only interested in bargains.

It’s useful in combination with another list building tool for general lead capture.

Listagram has a free tier for less than 5000 views a month. Paid plans start at $29/m.

14. Sleeknote

Sleeknote says they’re the next generation in lead generation software because, instead of popups, they use smart onsite messages. It sounds like marketing speak to me.

They have triggering options such as scroll trigger, page level, exit intent, and manual (which is a custom trigger based on javascript). You’re also able to set triggers to only be active during certain time frame (like for a special sale).

The built-in customization allows you to match the forms look and feel with the rest of your website.

Sleeknote does more than capture email addresses. Their platform comes with a digital assistant that can help shoppers find what they’re looking for, give product recommendations, and do promotional campaigns.

They have integrations with most email service providers and Ecommerce/CMS so you can route your data to your own tools for follow-up.

It starts with a 7-day free trial then paid plans start at €62 a month.

Email prospecting and lookup tools

Email prospecting software lets you take a more proactive approach to lead generation. Instead of waiting for your ideal customer to come to you, you find their contact information and reach out to them to close deals.

It can speed up your sales process considerably. The downside is you’re limited to what a single person can do (unless you automate it further).

One of the most important things to look for in email prospecting software is whether or not the information they bring back is accurate.

Right after that is how do they source and verify the email addresses that they find? Some software scours the entire web while other software searches specific places like linkedIn.

15. AeroLeads

AeroLeads – get business emails, phone numbers, and B2B data – is a focused email prospecting tool used to find the emails of specific people or the phone number of their business. They have a chrome extension to prospect while you’re on a company websites.

After installing the chrome extension, you can navigate to sites like LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and AngelList to find leads in real time. In addition to finding contact information, AeroLeads lets you verify the emails you’ve gotten from their service or other places to improve your chances of landing in the right inbox.

AeroLeads is unique in that it also has a “done-for-you” email prospecting service. All you need to do is submit details of your ideal customer and they’ll get the contact information for you.

Pricing starts at $49/m for the software and $799 for their done-for-you service.

16. RocketReach

RocketReach is an email lookup tool that distills the massive amount of information available in the public domain to bring back relevant contact information. You can get the email (personal or work), phone number, and social media accounts of hundreds of millions of people. If your prospect isn’t there then they may not have an email address.

There’s a chrome extension that allows lets you collate contact information directly from profile pages or search results related to your prospect. When using the web application, you can filter based on multiple criteria such as location, company, and job title.

RocketReach has a limited free plan while paid plans start at $39/m for 170 lookups.

17. LeadGibbon

LeadGibbon is bold. Right on their homepage, they call out one of their competitors (hunter – we’ll discuss them later) and say they’re better.

Anyways, it’s LinkedIn prospecting software. Install their Chrome extension to get started. When inside of LinkedIn Sales Navigator (LSN), you’re able to click the Gibbon button that appears to find email addresses.

It checks possible emails against their company domain until you have the right one. You can also save emails directly to Google sheet. It’s a standard tool that will do its job but don’t expect anything spectacular from it.

They start with a seven day trial that gives you up to 100 email lookups. Paid plans start at $99/user/m for 200 emails.

18. Voila Norbert

This is was an early player in the lead prospecting space. Voila Norbert – a tool to find anyones email address – performs a few functions in addition to email lookup. You can verify the generated emails and enrich contact data. Most of these functions are performed automatically when it finds an email address.

A feature I like is the confidence rating they attach to the emails generated. If he’s not sure of the deliverability then he’ll let you know ahead of time.

The tool supports .csv upload for bulk lookup and has a Chrome extension that lets you search for emails on the go.

They start with a free plan with fifty free verified contacts (if they can’t find the contact then it doesn’t count against your quota). Monthly plans start at $39/m or $.10 per lead if you chose to pay as you go.

19. Hunter

Hunter is a popular email lookup tool and one of the only ones with a Firefox extension. It’s possible to find almost anyones email address in seconds. Hunter scours public sources to find the email address of your prospects.

Whenever they locate an email address, they let you know where they sourced it. The hunter search function is a bit different because they bring back all the email addresses associated with a domain. That could be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your goals and the information you have about potential prospects.

On top of the email lookup features, you can also test the deliverability of the email addresses you discover.

They have a free plan that gives you 100 free lookups a month. Paid plans start at $39/m.

20. Anymail finder

Anymail finder– the email finder that makes sure your emails don’t bounce – is a bit different from other email lookup tools because they use a rollover credit system. If you don’t use all of your searches to find verified emails every month then they’ll roll over to the next month. This is handy if you are prospecting more during certain periods and less during others.

Their approach to email verification is that they test it directly against the domain server.

Like Voila Norbert, they only charge you for verified email addresses instead of the number of lookups. It supports bulk upload and an API accessible by their customers. Unlike other tools, they don’t have a Chrome extension.

The first twenty emails are free then paid plans start at $49/m.

21. Sellhack

This email prospecting software performs all the major tasks associated with lead prospecting. SellHack has a twelve step verification process which includes using multiple data providers to ensure you get the right contact information.

In addition to finding the contact information of your prospects, Sellhack allows you to set reminders and follow up via multiple channels. They integrate directly with your email client such as gmail or outlook, so you can send outreach and follow up emails to prospects from the platform.

Finally, they have a bulk upload and verification feature. Give them incomplete data such as a name and company then get contact information back.

22. LeadFuze

LeadFuze – email prospecting automation – has a different approach to email address prospecting. Instead of going to LinkedIn or Crunchbase to find data, you do it from their dashboard.

You’re able to find leads based on many filters and criteria such as:

Industry

Role

Location

Ad budget

Employee count

Technologies

Hiring intent

Keywords, Etc.

They claim to use AI to improve your list building efforts, verify emails, and prevent duplicate entries. There are integrations with multiple applications and tools to send outreach and sales follow up emails. This is one of the best email prospecting tools in this review and will go a long way towards streamlining your prospecting.

Plans start at $97/m for 500 credits a month.

Email Outreach and Follow up Tools

Email outreach is the next step after gathering an email list through email prospecting tools. They make it easy to send and follow up with prospects over time. And help to increase your open, reply, and sales conversion rates.

An email outreach tool is only as good as the data you feed it (which you for instance got from prospecting tools) and the email sequences you use. An online email follow up tool is not a replacement for the human touch. Here are the best email outreach and follow up tools we reviewed.

When evaluating email outreach software, there are a few things to look out for. 1. PersonalizationHow do they handle merge tags and what exactly can be personalized in each email. Some arequite limited while others go as far as letting you A/B test your email copy.

2. Sending limitsHow many emails can you send in a day or at once? The way some of these platforms work, they’re limited by the integrations you set up.

For example, if you send email through Gmail then you’re limited to you can send 150 emails through Gmail a day when you’re logged in through a remote client. This won’t be a problem if you don’t send many emails a day. If you’re a high volume sender it’s something you should take into consideration.

3. ReportingWhat information is available in the reports. Do they get granular or is it just a high level overview? Cn you see open, clicks, and replies alone? can you see how your campaign is performing over time? Of course, the amount of information you need depends on the goals of your campaigns, but it’s important to be aware of the limitations.

23. Lemlist

Lemlist is email outreach software that makes it simple to send great emails to your prospects – they describe it as emails that get replies. It comes with multiple pre-built templates and follow up sequences. Lemlist also gives you the ability to A/B test your subject lines and email content until you find the best variations.

You can personalize emails by merging the name, company information, and other custom fields. What sets Lemlist apart is the ability to add personalized images to your emails. You can add a logo, website, headshot, or anything you can think of to personalize the emails.

The software also has built-in reporting to track open rates, clicks, replies, and bounces.

It starts with a 14-day trial then $19/m.

24. Mailshake

Mailshake is email follow up software for gmail. It has gone through multiple iterations before arriving at what we see today. Mailshake comes built-in with multiple templates that work for sales, guest blogging outreach, and customer engagement.

They have a nifty feature that shows real time suggestions such as words to delete, length of content, and whether or not your email is likely to get a response. If you’re not sure of what you’re sending (or just need a fresh perspective), you can request a free manual review of your emails.

In addition, you’re able to control how and when your messages go out, add merge fields, and schedule automatic follow-ups based on recipient actions. Of course, there are reporting features so you can optimize your campaigns over time. Be aware that it only works with Gmail.

Plans start at $29/m. There’s no free trial but there is a 30-day money back guarantee.

25. Reply

Reply – a sales acceleration platform – bills itself as an all-in-one solution for inbound sales, outbound sales, account based sales, recruiting, business development and more.

One of the features that sets Reply apart is their integrations to streamline your workflow. Most other follow up tools are self contained or only have one or two integrations. Reply has many more to for instance connect with your CRM, Slack or sales pipeline software.

Reply employs “AI” to sort contacts into different buckets and vet your emails to increase deliverability and reply rates.

After a fourteen day trial, prices start at $40/m.

26. Rebump

Rebump is a simple email follow up tool for gmail. They stripped away a lot of the features other email outreach platforms have. to focus on their core offering.

Rebump integrates directly with Gmail. After sending an email, click the checkbox to initiate follow up messages – they take care of the rest. Inside Rebump, you can monitor how many “bumps” you’ve sent as well as set the frequency of the bumps.

This is truly a bare bones app. Don’t expect any magic. That being said, it does its job well.

They have a thirty day free trial and paid plans start at $5/m.

27. SalesHandy

SalesHandy positions itself as a suite of email tools used to make the most of your email outreach. Instead of switching between multiple specialized tools, you can do most of what you need from one backend.

You’re able to send emails, follow up, track opens, and use templates.

In addition to tracking open, click, and replies, you also get insights into how your prospects are interacting with attachments (one of the few tools that does this). They round out their feature set with mail merge and integrations with all the major mail clients.

They have a free plan with paid options starting at $7/user/m.

28. PersistIQ

This handy outbound email automation software prides itself on a clean and simple interface that gets out of your way and allows you to work.

With PersistIQ you can create campaigns and add multiple steps and recipients. When the campaign is live, you’ll be able to track the key metrics like opened, clicked, replied, and opted out. You can also drill down further to look at metrics of individual contacts.

PersistIQ has pre-built email templates or you can make and save your own to speed up your workflow. They also have hundreds of integrations via Zapier and dedicated ones like Salesforce and ProsperWorks. Of course, there are mail merge features but these are a bit smarter, because it makes sure the merge variables are available or it doesn’t send.

Plans start at $40/user/m.

29. Sendbloom

Sendbloom is outbound email software that which speeds up the direct sales process by offering a lot of interconnected features. It connects your sales efforts across multiple touchpoints like calls and social channels. It integrates directly with Salesforce and Gmail to help you launch personalized campaigns.

Use templates or build your sequences from scratch to maximize your open, reply, and click through rates. Sendbloom has a segmenting feature which allows you to get VERY granular with your messaging.

As you’d expect, they have reporting features to get a view of entire campaigns or individual mailings so you can stay on top of your lead generation. But Sendbloom is a lot of functionality if all you want to do is send emails and follow ups.

On top of that, you’re able to insert calendars directly into your emails to cut down on unnecessary back and forth.

The defining features of Mixmax include polls, surveys, cloud storage integration, undo send (life saver), and custom branding. With all the added features you can do everything from recruitment to link building. I’ll be the first to admit, it does a lot and you’ll need to be a power user to get the most out of it.

They have a free plan for 100 emails a month and paid plans start at $9/user/month.

Email Marketing Automation Tools

Email marketing automation tools come in many flavors. Some are full marketing automation tools and CRMs while other just focus on sending email really well.

We’ll go through some of the best email marketing automation software on the market to help you nurture the leads you generate and close sales.

When evaluating email marketing automation software, it’s important to understand:

1. Email Creation and sendingLet’s not kid ourselves, most of your newsletters and automations are going to be emails. So it is very important that these render well and the email creation process is easy and allows you to do automations but also ad-hoc promotions and newsletters.

2. The reportingWhat information do they give you about your campaigns? Is it simply opens, clicks and bounces or can you set up goals and split tests to get granular with the information you have access to?

3. What can trigger an automationThis is where email marketing automation software shines. When you can monitor email, website, and purchase behavior to trigger automations, you can send better messages and increase your revenue.

4. Integration ecosystemFinally, do they play nice with all your other tools. It doesn’t matter if your email marketing automation tool does everything you need when it doesn’t integrate with the other tools you use. Make sure the tool you use integrates with your current marketing stack.

31. ActiveCampaign

ActiveCampaign was one of the first email marketing tools to roll out marketing automation to all of its customers. I’ve personally used it for all my projects over the last few years. They’re able to unify multiple touch points (purchases, website behavior, and email engagement) to create a full picture of your contacts and improve your marketing automation results.

They have a visual automation workflow that lets you schedule messages to go out to your new leads or current customers. The power in ActiveCampaign comes from the ability to add tags, branch automations based on visitor behavior, score contacts. ActiveCampaign has a built-in CRM.

They also have other important features like split testing and segmentation for nurturing your leads. You can send specific messages to one group of people then test that message against multiple variations also in your automations.

They have a free trial. Paid plans start at $9/month.

32. GetResponse

GetResponse is email marketing automation software mixed with a hint of growth hacking tool. They’re a unified platform for small business marketing which include newsletter blasts and drip campaigns.

They focused on making a strong landing page builder as well as a webinar tool that integrates directly with the rest of the platform.

You can use their marketing automation features to build campaigns that react to custom variables and your lead’s behavior in real time. The end result is a constantly evolving campaign that closes more deals.

Unlike other platforms, you’re unable to use the best features of the marketing automation platform until you upgrade to higher plans.

Pricing starts at $15/m for up to 1,000 contacts.

33. Convertkit

Convertkit positions itself as the go-to email marketing and automation tool for creators and bloggers. You can tag and segment subscribers. Through these tags, you can send targeted messages to the right people.

ConvertKit comes with the ability to build automations based on an “if this then that” format which allows you to react to subscriber behavior. I like this approach because it makes everything so much easier to understand which can be a challenge with marketing automation.

Integrations make it possible to pull in data from many sources, especially in the membership and training area (because creators / bloggers focus).

They have a fourteen day free trial and paid plans start at $29/m.

34. Aweber

Aweber is a simple email marketing tool, their drag and drop campaign builder is easy to use which is always a plus.

Key features include tagging, newsletters, drag and drop editor, and split testing. You can also segment subscribers based on criteria important to you. Their marketing automation features are basic but can still get the job done, if you don’t have that many wishes and keep your automated marketing campaigns simple.

Use the mobile app to monitor the health of your campaigns. The reporting features will allow you to understand what’s working and what’s not.

Aweber has a thirty day free trial and paid plans start at $19/m.

35. Automizy

This email marketing automation tool allows you to build visual automation workflows that react to what your leads do (or don’t do). It is designed for small and medium businesses.

Automizy comes with a drag and drop email editor, multiple templates, and out of the box personalization options. Similar to other automation tools, you’re able to segment your messages to go out based on multiple factors such as list, actions, and custom variables with what they call “live filtering”, meaning you can save any filter and selection on your leads and customers to use them later.

All these options allow you to create automations that feel personal to your leads. One feature that’s not present yet is website behavioral targeting based on pages viewed. Right now, Automizy is a bit basic for the true automation enthusiast, but probably a good match for SMB with a bit of automation aspirations.

It starts at $9/m with a 14-day trial.

36. Elastic email

Elastic email is an email marketing platform designed with simplicity in mind. With the software you can segment and personalize your emails using merge tags, dynamic content replacement, and conditional subject lines.

In addition to that, you can send out smart drip campaigns based on the segment you’ve added the subscriber to. They’re one of the few email marketing services which allow you to perform testing on almost any aspect of the email (layouts, subject lines, content, etc).

They have a built in survey feature that lets you ask your subscribers questions to better personalize their experience. A strong point of Elastic Email is that they offer 24/7 Customer Support, even to free accounts. That is especially helpful when you are just starting with Email Marketing.Pricing starts at $9/m for up to 2,500 contacts.

37. Mailchimp

Mailchimp rebranded to focus on being a platform for all your marketing needs. To achieve that aim, can create Facebook ads, Instagram ads, and Google remarketing ads in addition to landing pages.

But they are still the most popular email marketing software, first. They have features that enhance your email marketing. Needless to say, the UI can get complicated.

A neat feature I’ve only seen one other email marketing automation platform do is send physical postcards. They have deep integrations with key Ecommerce platforms such as Shopify which lets you track the ROI of your campaigns from inside the app itself.

Mailchimp is free for the first 2,000 email subscribers with paid plans starting at $10/m.

38. Drip

Drip is big on integrating every touchpoint your leads and customers have with your brand. It comes with tracking features which give you deep insights and allow you to automatically add tags, segment, and trigger events.

On the email marketing side, you’re able to send drip campaigns (hence the name), build automated workflows, and personalize messages at scale. They also embrace the trend in multichannel by allowing you to create Facebook ads, postcards, and personalized website pages.

See our full review of drip marketing software here.

It starts at $49/m after a 14-day free trial.

39. Moosend

Moosend is an easy to use and effective email marketing and email drip software. They have a straightforward workflow so it is very easy to get started without any training.

With Moosend you can create beautiful newsletters. The email editor is something I really like here. It is a true drag and drop editor and has a autosave and history feature, which we all know can be a life saver!

Segment your audience, and build opt-in forms to capture leads. The capture forms are less sophisticated than the dedicated lead capture tools on this list, but will get the job done.

With automation, you can create pretty advanced email drip campaigns. Start when people subscribe with a welcome email then evolve the campaign based on what they click on, open, or actions they take on your website. There are multiple pre-made email drip campaigns called “recipes” to get you started quickly.

They have integrations with platforms like Woocommerce and Bigcommerce so you can pull cart data right into Moosend and trigger automated email campaigns.

It’s free for up to 1,000 contacts with paid plans starting at $10/m.

Live Chat tools

Live chat software made its debut a while back but only recently got popular with solutions like Drift and Intercom leading the charge. They’re a type of lead generation software you embed on your website which allows you to engage with customers. Live chat tools are great for lead generation and double as a customer support solution.

With live chat tools, look for:Availability timesYou can’t always be there to chat with people in real time. Availability times allow you to set expectations with your visitors and encourage them to help themselves.

Simple bots and routing rulesBots help you prequalify visitors so you get the best leads. Can you route visitor queries to the right help documents when you’re not available or set up meetings when you’re otherwise indisposed. Of course, the functionality of the bot will depend your goals.

40. Drift

Drift champions conversational marketing with their offering. Instead of multiple steps before you can qualify a prospect – which can take days – their bot does it rapidly. You get a hot lead that’s ready to talk to a real person – and possibly buy. If not, you can route them to your email marketing platform or CRM and continue to follow up. I think that is marketing automation at its finest.

The key aspect of drift is the use of bots who follow a script predetermined by you (or a template you can adapt) to qualify leads. Once qualified, you’re alerted and can jump into the conversation or book a meeting for later.

Drift also gives you information about anonymous visitors, provides a help center so your bot can answer common questions, and integrates basic email marketing functions.

There’s a limited free plan with paid plans starting at $50/m.

41. Pure Chat

Pure Chat – live chat software for businesses – divided into two distinct functions. One is for support and the other is a chatbot geared towards lead generation. You’re able to set up a few automated replies to qualify and capture leads.

Pure chat has a simple interface that allows you to customize the colors, availability times, welcome messages, and more. It also has a native Zapier integration so you can send your leads to your CRM or other marketing database.

It’s a great free option but I’m not convinced about the premium price point, pro features cost $79/m.

42. HelpCrunch

HelpCrunch is an intelligent customer communication platform that allows you to send emails, receive inbound support emails, and install a live chat widget on your website.

The HelpCrunch chat widget combines messages across multiple touchpoints. If someone sent you an email then opened a chat conversation with the same email everything is unified. Of course, there’s personalization.

You can automatically add leads to email marketing campaigns to increase engagement and conversions. It also has the ability to setup custom messages based on specific variables like time on page, referrer, browser language, etc.

The only thing missing here is a knowledge base which they’re working on adding later in the year.

They have a free plan with paid plans starting at $12/user/m.

43. Freshchat by Freshworks

Freshchat by Freshworks is one of the many growth hackingtools created by freshworks. It’s a versatile live chat app that can be used for sales, marketing, and customer success. Even though it’s a live chat tool, its effectiveness lies in the ability to create custom campaigns with bots.

Based on user behavior (downloads, pages visited, etc.) the bot will send a custom message, qualify your visitor, capture contact information and upload them into your CRM or ESP. When a lead reengages with you, their information is automatically populated so you have the right context.

The chat widget is customizable so you can make it reflect your brand.

They have a limited free plan with paid plans starting at $19/user/month.

44. Olark

Olark is an old staple when it comes to live chat software. It doubles as a live chat tool for sales and customer support. First off, they have a lot of customization options to match the chat widget to your brand.

Built-in automation workflows allow you to tailor your messages to visitor behavior (location, referrer, or browsing behavior), qualify leads, and ensure you close more sales.

They also provide reporting metrics to optimize your messaging over time which has the positive effect of potentially delivering better leads. They integrate with other tools such as Google analytics, Groove, and Front.

After a 14-day trial, plans start at $17/user/month.

45. Tawk.to

Tawk.to is a fully featured live chat app to engage with visitors and capture leads from your website.

You can monitor who’s on your website in real time, customize the widget to match your brand, and use the mobile app to answer messages on the go. The app integrates with most CMS and you can also set up automation triggers for your chat widget.

Tawk.to is truly unique because it’s a 100% free chat app. They make money through services and add-ons such as providing live chat agents and removing branding.

46. Website Alive.com

Website Alive is a contender for the live chat software throne. Their solution is called Website Alive.com. It has the major features you’d expect from a live chat app such as customization, automated triggers, and routing rules.

The reporting gives you the metrics you need to optimize your live chat lead generation efforts without becoming a burden. A unique feature is the ability to distribute links to your chat so people can click (social media or email) and engage directly with you or an agent.

Pricing for AliveChat starts at $30/user/month.

Landing Page Builders

Landing pages are the staple of any lead generation campaign. They’re specific pages focused on one thing – conversions. That may be a sale or a lead. Landing pages have minimal navigation, strong calls to action, and focused copy.

You can send traffic from any source like SEA, facebook campaign or use them in tandem with your site as download leadgen pages. Specific landing page builders are made to deal with this type of conversion pages and usually have smart functions to make A/B testing, launching and building landing pages easier.

Your landing page tool should be able to:Integrate with your toolsA landing page builder is usually an intermediate tool. It helps you move closer to the ultimate goal of converting visitors to customers. with that goal in mind, it needs to integrate with many other platforms to let you send nurturing emails, collect payments, etc.

Allow for split testingYou never know if you’ve got the best version of your page until you test it. Split testing should be readily available on all the plans instead of having to upgrade to a higher tier to access it.

Give you accurate reportsI’ve had my fair share of landing page tools that didn’t give accurate reports. The tool would say I had x amount of visitors and conversions while my email marketing service told me differently.

Needless to say, I dumped it.

With the wrong data, you can’t make the right choices.

47. Instapage

Instapage has gone through a transformation over the last few years. They went from one of the many landing page builders out there to a landing page solution just for teams and agencies.Their product reflects that.

They have dedicated support for permissions, multiple users, collaboration, and notes on pages being built in the platform. Their builder is one of the most intuitive I’ve ever used. They have heatmap reporting, allow for dynamic text replacement, and split testing.

Desktop and mobile editing is separated so you can get perfect versions for all your visitors. One of my favorite features is global blocks. Instead of having to go back and edit each page individually, global blocks makes it possible to do it at once.

It’s a great tool but it’s much more expensive than any other one on the market. That’s because they target agencies and the enterprise. The enterprise market has a different price point.After a 14-day trial, plans start at $129/m.

48. Leadpages

Leadpages is one of the most popular landing page tools for lead generation on the market. They’ve evolved from a stiff builder with a lot of templates to a more flexible solution for marketing and lead generation.

Templates are very important for landing page building software. Leadpages comes with over a hundred free landing page templates. The template are categorized, so high converting pages show up first. That is especially nice, you will have a head start when building a landing page. They sport a wide range of integrations, and automatic lead magnet delivery.

An interesting feature for lead generation is the integration with Facebook ads and placement of Facebook pixel. You can make, launch, and optimize Facebook ad campaigns from the backend. The reporting is simple, including campaign ROI and easy to understand so you can derive insights that move your business forward.

Leadpages comes with a 14-day trial then starts at $37/m.

49. Unbounce

Unbounce has expanded their product from a landing page builder to include floating bars and popups. You could call it one of the most powerful landing page builders available to small businesses.

The landing page software has a drag and drop visual editor that lets you control every element on your pages. You can start from scratch or choose from a their collection of templates built based on high converting pages.

A/B testing and dynamic text replacement come standard. Their reporting features are clear and help you uncover multiple points of improvement. Unbounce has one of the largest integration ecosystems around (from being in business for quite some time), because after generating the leads, you will want to send them to your own marketing and CRM tools and follow up.

They have a 30-day trial then pricing starts at $99/month.

50. Lander

Lander is a solid landing page builder. They say their mission is to help you build great pages that convert. To achieve that mission, Lander comes with over a hundred templates out of the box.

The main features of Lander include a straightforward editor, A/B testing, and integration with your Facebook page as an extra tab. You’re able to implement dynamic text replacement to improve your PPC campaigns.

Two of the features I like most with Lander are the autofill forms and the built in welcome email (great for lead magnet delivery).

Their reports give you the information you need. All the pages you create are automatically mobile optimized. Lander integrates with the most popular email marketing services.

Pricing starts at $49/m after a 14-day free trial.

51. Landigi

Landigi is a landing page tool to create conversion focused squeeze pages and has a strong focus on giving you the ability to make pages that generate leads.

The landing drag and drop editor lets you design mobile and desktop landing pages separately – so you can make them exactly like you want . There are over 200 templates to choose from, and it doesn’t take long before you have a beautiful landing page created for your business. Landingi also comes with a built-in image and icon library to further speed up page creation.

52. Pagewiz

Pagewiz is a standard landing page builder that lets you create and publish multiple pages without hassle. It’s focus is on optimizing pages to get a higher return on your paid marketing campaign.

It’s packed with features such as a true drag and drop landing page editor. You can use the Google fonts from their interface. Mobile optimized design for your landing pages with over a hundred templates and native integrations with video players like YouTube for video landing pages.

Pagewiz plays nice with most CRM and email marketing tools to follow up with your leads after they sign up. Alternatively, use a webhook or the Zapier integration. You get to A/B test your pages and access reporting that help you optimize your campaigns.

Pagewiz also has an API you can use to extend the functionality of your own (saas) products (or makes something unique for your customers).

It comes with a 30 day trial then starts at $29/m.

Dragdropr

Dragdropr is landing page software that lets marketers create any type of page. That includes blog posts and Ecommerce product pages. You could also call it a website builder.

Because of that, they have ready integrations with all of the most popular content management systems. They have a drag and drop builder that works on the principle of content blocks. The editor takes a bit of getting used to, because some items are hidden in the menu.

It comes with automatic responsiveness for mobile. A chrome extension so you can make changes directly from the front end of your website. I thought that was pretty neat because it’s always a time waster to log into a tool to make one or two tweaks to a page.

There’s a 14-day trial then it costs $19/m.

54. Landen

Landen is the final page builder on our list but it brings a lot to the table. Landen takes a different approach to creating landing pages. Instead of giving you templates and letting you loose on the world, they ask a series of questions.

Once you answer them, Landen will generate a landing page for you. With that as a starting point, you can edit the fonts, colors, images and content. The editor is not inline, meaning that you see the texts left and the resulting page to the right.

You can host videos, lead capture forms, and access reports that give you the most important information you need. When you need a series of pages quickly then this will help you create a beautiful consistent design.

If, instead, you want more control of your pages then this may not be the best option. Your first page is free then plans start at $15/m.

Meeting Scheduler Apps

Scheduling software has one purpose – to plan meetings and calls with the leads you’ve generated without the back and forth. The other lead generation tools in this article wouldn’t as be effective if you couldn’t take your relationships to the next level.

With meeting scheduling apps, it’s important to make sure they integrate with your current calendar. apart from that, as long as it books meetings then you’re good to go.

55. Doodle

Doodle is a stripped down scheduling app that’s laser focused on its main task – scheduling more meetings.

Integrate it with the calendar you use and set it up to show your free times. After that, create a description of the meeting or event, send it to your participants, let them fill in availability, and choose the times that work best for you.

That’s it. You should be able to set up meetings pretty quickly. They have a mobile app which allows you to set meetings straight from your phone.

It has a free plan with paid options starting at €8/m.

56. Calendly

Calendly is full featured meeting scheduler app for individuals and teams. You’re able to integrate with your calendar, set up a custom page and availability, and then send out your link to leads.

Your participants choose the best time for them (localized) and everyone is good to go.Conversely, you can use it to capture leads by sharing the link on social media and your website. Calendly has extra features such as capping the number of meetings in a day, buffers between meetings, and minimum notification times (this is especially useful if you have a public calendar anyone can access).

It’s free to use with paid plans starting at $10/user/m.

57. Pick

As the name suggests, Pick allows your leads to pick the best time for them based on your availability. After you sign up, integrate your calendars (optional), set your availability, and grab your custom link.

Once you share the Pick meeting link, they can select the times that work best for them. If Pick has access to both calendars, it helps surface times that are free for everyone to cut down on confusion and the time spent looking for available spots.

It costs $3/m.

58. NeedtoMeet

NeedtoMeet is a scheduling tool that can save you hours every week. Once you setup your account there are only a few steps to follow.

Create a description of the event and set your availability, grab your custom link, and send it out to participants. They select a time that works and you’re all set. You can edit meetings in your dashboard, view comments from your attendees, and receive confirmation notifications.

There’s a free plan with paid options starting at $12/user/year.

59. Setmore meeting scheduler

Setmore has all the features you need in a meeting app and much more. For many people, it has too more features than needed. Let’s take a look.

You can, of course, sign up and send out a unique link to set appointments. They have email alerts and reminders for you and your appointments.The difference between Setmore and most other scheduling tools is their live call answering service. You can also take payments via your booking forms.

In addition to integrating with your calendar, it works with your content management system, social profiles, Slack, Instagram (I thought that was a bit much but It must be important to some of the customers) and more.

They have a free tier with paid plans starting at $25/m.

60. Appointlet

Sign up for Appointlet and get started by customizing your booking page. . Once done and synchronized with your calendar, you can embed it on your website or share the direct link.

Your prospects can choose the best times to schedule for instance a demo or first lead intake. Appointlet has a Zapier integration which allows you to cut down on manual entry and push the data to your CRM, payment or other applications. You can also collect payments through a Stripe integration.

They have a free tier and the paid option starts at $10/user/m.

61. You Can Book Me

With You Can Book Me – a team meeting scheduling app – streamlines the entire process for everyone involved. Integrate your calendar, set up your booking page, and share with your prospects. Your leads choose times that work for them and you.

It sends out multiple reminders on your behalf, allows you to take payments through a Stripe connection, and integrates with Zapier so you can update/add lead data to your CRM. You can also choose the length of meetings, add buffers, and send automated follow up emails after the meeting.

They have a free account and their paid plan costs $10/m/calendar.

Customer Research and Survey Tools

If you don’t understand your users then all the lead generation tools in the world won’t help you (very much). Because of irrelevant messages, because of wrong segmentation, because of… lack of research and personalisation.

How do you figure it out?

You observe and ask questions.

In a lead generation context, you can use surveys (paired with an incentive) so people leave their contact information. You get deeper insights and they get a goodie.

You can also use survey opt-in forms. Before you capture leads, ask them a few relevant questions that will help you segment them into different groups. This can only be done once you understand who your market is – not before. Otherwise, you’ll be asking the wrong questions.

The customer research and survey tools in this section will help you understand your audience so you can generate more leads and send targeted messages.

62. Qualaroo

Qualaroo is a survey tool that combines features to get actionable user feedback. Instead of just asking questions about their experience, you’re able to set up workflows that react to user behavior.

Show different questions or take different actions based on the user’s geography, referral source, or even on site actions. They also integrate with IBM Watson to perform sentiment analysis and get deeper insights into large amounts of data (I think that is a really unique feature).

Qualaroo has an API available to integrate with your application and use the data you generate to react in real time.

The platform has a 14-day trial then plans start at $99/m.

63. Typeform

Typeform is popular survey software that looks good. The survey software works well on almost any platform and device. The Typeform way is to create a survey experience your customers and users could love to increase your response and completion rates.

It has a straightforward builder with multiple answer types such as long answer, multiple choice, and yes/no. You can customize almost any element of the form and, with a bit of tweaking, it’s possible to create quizzes.

They have a lot of integrations with various tools so you can slice and dice your data..Typeform has a free tier with paid plans starting at $35/m.

64. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is one of the most popular survey platforms on the internet. With it, you’re able to get feedback and capture the voice of your customers in different contexts.

They have a proprietary feature called SurveyMonkey Genius that predicts how well your survey will perform based on multiple data points. From there, you can tweak it so it get the results you’re looking for – more responses and quality answers.

You can make basic customizations like changing the color palette and adding your logo. The analysis features give you the right insights to take action on your data.They have many templates so getting up to speed is a matter of choosing what works for you and tweaking it to your needs.

There is a free tier with paid options starting at $35/m.

65. Crazy Egg

Crazy Egg may not be the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of a tool for customer research – bear with me.

When people are on your website, you have little idea of what they’re doing, the things they click on, and what they ignore. Crazy Egg helps marketers find out with heatmaps, visitor recordings, and click activity.

Understand how far down your pages people scroll and whether or not they get to the most important information. Are they trying to click images that aren’t linked to anything? A/B test it with Crazy Egg to see if you can improve conversions.

This passive method of customer research can work wonders when you pair it with visitor feedback.

Paid plans start at $29/m and come with a 30-day trial.

66. Survicate

Survicate is a survey tool that lends itself to many applications. You can, for instance, use it for product development, customer feedback and measuring satisfaction, website optimization, and more.

It has an easy-to-use builder and many templates to choose from which are based on specific use cases. Skip logic, advanced targeting, and lead scoring are included in their paid plans and gives you more control of the experience your end users have. In addition to the delivery options, customization is well thought out, it allows you to add your own CSS.

The reporting is more detailed than most other platforms. For example, they have a dedicated NPS survey which helps you figure out your NPS score (which is useless on its own BTW). With it, you can see how your NPS is changing over time and understand whether or not you’re meeting your customers expectations.

The have a free tier with paid plans starting at $159/m.

67. Survey Anyplace

Survey Anyplace is a survey maker that combines standard survey features with interactive elements. Making it an engaging experience. There are multiple question types such as long answer, image choice, yes/no, smiley ratings, etc.

When users take the survey, they can be incentivized with a prize delivered in an interactive format. Like a scratch card or slot machine to deliver the prize.

AssessmentsPersonalized experience can go further with assessment-features such as Variable Scores per answer, personalized outcomes, and an Animated Gauge to indicate results. You can use an online self assessment for lead generation as well.

Marketers have control of the design and the reports come online and in PDF format. Of course, there are integrations.

The survey maker has a free tier, then starts at $29/m.

68. Hotjar

Hotjar is a suite of survey and customer research tools. You can send out surveys to ask multiple questions.

They have a feedback poll feature that pops up on your website to ask questions (in general or page specific) calculated to give you the most insights while reducing friction. You’re also able to research user behavior with heat maps and visitor recordings.

One of my favorite features is the ability to set up conversion funnels. You can see where people are dropping off and spot areas for improvement. They integrate with most CMS with just a few clicks or a inserting a code snippet.

Hotjar has a free tier with prices starting at $29/m.

Content marketing tools

)
Content marketing has been proven to generate more traffic, links, and generate more leads. To make it work, we use the right content to attract the right leads and visitors. The following content marketing tools will help your company create amazing content that attracts your ideal audience.
Content marketing tools come in all shapes and sizes so it’s hard to put specific criteria on what to look for when evaluating them.
In the end, it depends on your marketing goals and the resources you have available.

69. AnswerThePublic

Aligning your content and searcher intent is an important factor when search engines are deciding what to rank on the first page. AnswerThePublic is a content marketing tool that gives content marketers insights into what people are searching for and the intent behind it.

For example, if you’re searching for real estate, they won’t show you a specific vendor, instead, they’ll show you comparison lists others have compiled.

They use autocomplete data from Google and Bing to give you a picture of search queries and trends. Type in your search term and it’ll organize the data into multiple categories such as questions, prepositions, related, and comparisons.

It’s free to use with a paid plan priced at $99/m.

70. Visual.ly

Visual.ly is a matching service to visual and design freelancers, so you can tap into the visual marketing trend. The benefit of the platform is that they have a vetting and quality assurance process. So you can be sure you’re working with quality talent.

The freelancers will make you visual assets including infographics, ebooks, presentations, videos, etc. With a portfolio to look through their past work. Each project is unique so there’s no pricing information, instead, you’ll have to ask for a quote.

71. Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo is a content research tool to discover what’s popular with audiences in any space.

It works by showing marketers the most shared content based on specific domains or specific keywords. Once you search, you can filter the results by format, date, length, and other criteria. They give you information about share count, the platform they were shared, and the backlinks they’ve gotten.

After you know what’s working, all you have to do is create something better and distribute it far and wide.

This is my favorite tool for guest posting content research. I’ll type in the URL of the website I want to pitch then find the most popular type of content. From there I can come up with something relevant or with a new spin and pitch it to the website.

There’s a limited free tier and paid plans start at $99/m.

72. SEMRush

This is an all-in-one SEO toolkit for marketing teams. SEMRush is strong in SEO and competitor analysis.

Uncover backlink profiles, keywords you can rank for, people linking to you, and how your website stack up against the competition. Take competitors or relevant websites and input their URLs to find the keywords they’re ranking for.

From there, create content that’s better (we don’t need any more mediocre content clogging the interwebs) and watch it rank.

I’m just scratching the surface of what SEMRush can do. Sign up for their free tier and take it for a spin. Paid plans start at $99.95/m.

73. Buffer

Buffer is a content marketing tool that helps you distribute your blogging, articles and publications far and wide through social channels.

They integrate with most popular social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. It has built-in analytics which allow you to understand what’s working and what’s not. It also comes with a browser extension and a mobile app so you can schedule content whenever you find it. Distribute your own and curate from other brands around the world.

Buffer has a free tier then starts at $15/m.

74. Grammarly

Have you ever been on a site with lots of simple grammar and spelling mistakes? How does that make you feel about the people and products they offer? Yea, it doesn’t build a lot of trusty.

Grammarly is an online spelling and grammar checker that helps you catch common errors. It also sends you a weekly digest detailing your word count, how you stack up against other users, and how dynamic your writing is.

I just unlocked a badge for writing for 61 weeks straight. I’m working on the 100 weeks achievement.

They have a Chrome extension that works on most websites as well as a Microsoft Word plugin.

It’s free to use most of the features. Premium grammar checking starts at $29.95/m.

75. SlideShare

This may not be exactly what you think about when you hear content marketing tool. That doesn’t take away from the fact that SlideShare is a great place to distribute content and presentations.

No one ever said once you make content it has to stay in one format. If you see something performing well in its initial format, it makes sense to repurpose it into a presentation and upload to SlideShare.

Add strategic calls to action to funnel people back to your website and collect leads. SlideShare is free to use.

Conclusion

We all have different budgets, goals, and skill levels but want the same things – to build a successful business. With the right lead generation software, you’ll can develop a steady stream of contacts that turn into customers.

There are many to choose from and not all of them will fit your goals and business model. This collection is full of the best lead generation tools available. It’ll help you narrow down your selection and choose the ones that will serve you well.

If you have any other lead generation tools you’re using with great results then let me know in the comments – it may get an honorable mention.

About Daniel Ndukwu

Daniel Ndukwu is the founder of KyLeads where he helps businesses optimize their lead generation while sending better messages that increase sales. When he’s not working, he spends time traveling to as many countries as possible.

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If you are thinking of doing an RFP for a new ESP in 2019, you need to make the right New Year’s resolutions.

It’s the start of a new year in email marketing. And for many email marketers, the calendar in 2019 includes a date for the contract expiration with their exiting ESP. If that date falls in the first half of the year, and you haven’t started an RFP, you might as well realize right now that you’ve going to be renewing that contract. You simply don’t have enough time to conduct a thorough email software RFP.

If your contract expires in the second half of the year (or early in 2020), then you need to get moving on your RFP right away. It can’t wait “until later”. As a public service for those of you contemplating beginning an ESP RFP in the new year, I want to present 5 resolutions you need to make in order to ensure that the process goes as smoothly as an RFP can go (which in most cases isn’t that smoothly!).

1. Before starting any RFP I will negotiate a contract extension with my existing vendor

One of the eternal truths of ESP RFPs is that they always take longer than expected. So even if you are starting the RFP process well in advance of your current contract expiration, you are still likely to be concluding the process up until the point that your existing contract expires.

That’s why we always recommend that our RFP clients negotiate a month-to-month extension before issuing the RFP. Having run a global ESP myself, I can tell you with all certainty that, as long as your current ESP believes it has a good chance to retain your business, it will be very accommodating. The minute your current email provider determines that you are going elsewhere, it will become much more inflexible. So step one in any RFP process should be to lock down a month-to-month extension.

2. I will bring in an outside resource to help me manage my RFP

RFPs are a lot of work if done correctly. And by done correctly, I mean conducting a very thorough review of your options and putting the vendors through their paces as part of the process.

It’s in many ways a full-time job for someone, and unless you have a lot of time on your hands—or someone on your team does—you will find that something has got to give over the course of the RFP. And what invariably gives is the RFP, not your day job.

When that happens all momentum on the RFP will stop, and you will either make an ill-advised decision, or the RFP will drag on and on and on. Bringing in an outside resource to manage the selection process allows you and your team to focus on the outcome of the RFP, not the process. And it also puts the RFP process in the hands of someone who ideally is familiar with the vendors and your needs and can help make sure you make an informed decision (and get a great deal).

3. I will make sure that I compare the vendors as objectively as possible

We all have biases if we’ve worked in email long enough. It might be an ESP we worked with in the past. Or an ESP salesperson with whom we used to work. Biases are not inherently bad until they become emotional shortcuts in reaching a decision.

All too often a poorly managed RFP process will result in no logical methodology for making a decision other than price (wrong!) or “feeling” (wrong again!). The change of making the wrong decision goes up exponentially when you allow subjective factors to guide your outcome.

The method to prevent subjective factors to take over, is to set up the RFP process in a way that allows for direct, side by side comparisons of the competing vendors, whether its around features and functionality, or pricing. Using scorecards lets you further make objective decisions by including as many people as possible in the process, which has a way of negating the biases of any individual participant.

4. I will finish my RFP and come to a decision

Everyone hates RFPs, but what people really hate are RFPs that never quite get finished.

There are a lot of reasons why an RFP might never come to a conclusion.

We’ve touched on several of them, including no one having the time to devote to it, not having a clear methodology for choosing a winner, and having it drag on so long that everyone forgets why it was started in the first place.

The only ones who like RFPs that don’t finish are the incumbents, who get to keep the business without actually defending it all the way to the end. One of the major drawbacks to this happening is that you lose most of your leverage with the incumbent to get a better deal in a new contract. They eventually realize you aren’t moving, and have little incentive to cut pricing to keep you on board.

If your company has a reputation for never-ending RFPs, you will have trouble getting the best vendors to participate in your RFP, and if they do, they won’t put 100% into their effort.

5. I will recognize that it is impossible to nail everything down contractually right out of the gate with my new vendor

There are so many unknowns on both sides when you are going into a relationship with a new ESP. There will be surprises during the migration to the new platform. There will also be dramatic differences between the ongoing support you think you will need, and what you will actually need.

There’s no surer way to get your new relationship off on the wrong foot than to try to get these details 100% right during the contract negotiation. Because you won’t and you, your new vendor, or both of you will feel mistreated shortly into the new relationship.

Email platform migrationIn regards to the migration, I don’t believe this should be a money-making endeavor for your new vendor. Nor do I think it who should be a money-losing one either. Settling on a discounted hourly rate for key members of the vendor team, and also allowing for some flexibility in the hours allowed to be charge helps to make sure that everyone has a stake in getting the migration done as quickly and as seamlessly as possible. Both sides win!

Services and supportRegarding the services support you need on an ongoing basis—and you are going to need something no matter how “self-service” you consider yourself to be.

In the contracts we negotiation for our clients we try to arrive at the right number of hours, but we also stipulate that an audit of actual hours used be conducted 6 months after the actual cutover to the new vendor. This gives everyone enough time to settle into a routine and know what the real need is.

If the client is using more hours than they are paying for, then they can either cut back on what they expect from the ESP, or add hours to the contract going forward. And if they aren’t using all the hours they are paying for, the retainer hours can be adjusted down.

Five RFP resolutions to make at the start of the year

So that’s your list of 5 Email RFP resolutions to make at the start of 2019. If you make and keep these resolutions during any RFP you start this year, you will find that things will go smoother for you, and your decisions will be better. And even if you don’t have an RFP planned in the near future, keep this list handy and make sure you get your next ESP RFP process started off on the right foot!

About Chris Marriott

President & Founder of Marketing Democracy. A 25-year veteran of digital marketing, including well over a decade in email marketing, Chris is a recognized expert in the process of connecting leading brands with the right marketing technology partners and platforms.

Prior to founding Marketing Democracy as a consultancy focused exclusively on the ESP/CRM vendor selection process, Chris served as a tenured executive at Acxiom, leading and building its Global Digital and Email Agency Services team into one of the industry’s top services providers.

Chris also serves on the Board of Directors for eDatasource, a marketing technology company that collects, analyzes, organizes and archives millions of marketing messages, providing intelligence and analytics to the email marketing community.

Additionally he is a regular columnist on email marketing and the RFP process, and is an advisor to several emerging marketing technology companies including AudiencePoint and CertainSource.

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Not all WordPress email marketing providers are integrated equal

According to W3Techs, WordPress powers over 30% of the web. Many email service providers offer some type of integration with WordPress. But not all wordpress integrations are created equal. Is it a native integration? Which parts are integrated? You need to do some benchmarking before finding the best wordpress email service provider. So you can be sure that they will integrate intimately with your website.

Transactional email versus marketing email integrations

Transactional emails and marketing emails serve very different purposes:

Transactional emails are one-to-one emails that are triggered by a specific user interaction (think password reset emails, order confirmations, etc.). These emails are often sent through plugins like:

Let’s first look at the transactional email marketing software selection for WordPress.

Choosing the best transactional email service provider for WordPress

Transactional emails are fundamental to the proper functioning of any website. They often contain important information to provide a smooth User eXperience (UX).

WordPress has a basic functionality to send emails natively. But many sites will choose a dedicated external email service to send transactional WordPress emails. There are a number of advantages for using an ESP in these cases, namely:

Deliverability: ESPs allow you to add the proper technical settings, authentication and check your emails. With a good email deliverability team at the ESP, you know that bounces are managed and potential problems at ISPs are spotted and handled. This protects your send reputation and reduces the chance of them land in the SPAM folder.

Flexibility: You can customize your transactional emails by using templates and editor. And personalise them with any data field that you hold, this allows you to personalise your emails for each recipient.

Ease of implementation: Most ESPs offer a drag and drop builder to design your transactional emails, which makes it much easier to build and update your emails. Without the chance of “breaking” them.

Sending speed: check if your ESP is able delivered your emails in real-time. This is especially important for transactional emails like password resets where later delivery will create frustration and the user breaking off the session because they can’t continue.

Tracking: ESPs offer reporting about open rates, click rates, etc. Which is typically not available in wordpress plugins that send email.

WordPress and Deliverability: Get your emails into the inbox

The first thing you should expect of your transactional emails is that they make it to your recipient’s inbox. Transactional emails landing in the spam folder can generally result in:

Your customer care team gets a ticket (that’s when you’re lucky, although this can add up to many, many requests)

Your potential new customer abandons after not finding your email in their inbox and you lose a sale.

Native php doesn’t build a sender reputationMany WordPress sites still use the native php mail function, sending these emails through their own server. But building and maintaining a solid sender reputation to ensure your email make it to the inbox requires a lot of time, energy, and technical deliverability knowledge.

Avoid blacklistingMoreover, getting it wrong can result in getting blacklisted, for instance by people entering fake email addresses (and not noticing or recovering from it). That makes self-managed deliverability very hard to maintain at any sort of scale.

Deliverability Best practicesEmail deliverability is a complex and technical topic. There are many best practices to help ensure that your emails make it to the inbox. The bigger ESPs usually make this much easier and require very little from the WordPress user.

Key features to ensure top-notch email deliverability on WordPress:

Advanced reporting on delivery, open-rates, and click-rates. Ideally, you want this broken down by Internet Service Provider (ISP) to help you troubleshoot any issues.

Soft-bounce and hard-bounce reports for each email address.

Automated blacklisting of hard-bounces to avoid sending emails again to email addresses that don’t exist anymore.

SPF, DKIM and DMARC authentication (these are used by ISPs to ensure the sender is really who they say they are).

Keep a consistent brand image in your transactional messages

Design of transactional emails is often considered less important than marketing emails. But just like your landing pages or your marketing campaigns, they are associated to your brand. So it’s essential that you maintain a consistent brand image and tone – even in your transactional emails.

Think of it this way; transactional emails are expected communications with your brand. They receive even more engagement than normal marketing emails. So they should convey the same image that you have in all of your other communications.

When searching for the right transactional email service for your WordPress site, make sure to:

Pick a provider that offers a variety of email templates.

Test the tool’s drag & drop email design builder to ensure your marketing team will be able to quickly design emails that match your brand.

Check whether the email integration with wordpress allows to use dynamic fields easily. Can you configure order confirmation emails to include the dynamic product name, price, links, etc? Can you add product images to your emails easily?

The best email services for WordPress also let you trigger emails from pages visited and other website events. (eg: clicks, logins).

Degrees of WordPress integration: Choose an email tool that can scale with you

Because transactional emails are almost always triggered by on-site user interactions, it can be a bit of a pain to set up properly. Whether it is your technical team or your marketing team handling transactional emails, pick a email marketing tool that’s easy to install with WordPress.

The WordPress integrations can be deeper for some email tools than for others. This results in different degrees of technical know-how required for the setup process:

Is there a dedicated plugin developed and maintained by the email tool technical team? Or is it a plugin developed by an independant, affiliated team with no to little knowledge about the email product roadmap?

Is the email platform taking over every email sent through the platform, or is it merely an addition to your WordPress native email function?

Is the email platform also tracking pageviews and identifying known subscribers when they come to your site?

Is the email platform up to date and able to run on wordpress’ latest versions?

Regardless of your current situation, transactional emails can be pretty efficient communication channel. Make sure you select a tool that has robust and detailed documentation, as well as frequent updates. This ensures that you’re completely covered no matter what issues arise.

Choosing the best marketing email provider for WordPress

The best ESP is the one that helps you best reach your objectives. Marketing emails usually have commercial goals. Marketing emails are geared towards revenue. Performance is ideally calculated as ROI (Return On Investment) – using revenue or profit as the “return”.

To maximize ROI for any email campaign, there are two important distinguants to pay special attention to.

When considering email marketing providers for WordPress, look for a tool that allows you to act upon those two to maximize your ROI. Email list growth, and tools to segment your email list well in order to maximize your campaign’s impact.

Segmentation is essential to WP email marketing

Segmentation is the process of dividing your email list into groups or segments. For email marketing, any information that is available in your ESP to group contacts together can be used for segmentation.

This information can be historic data about the preferences of your subscribers.What products did they buy?What’s their average basket value?How much do they typically spend?What time of day are they most likely to buy?

You can only create some of those segments through multi-layered selections though, so make sure you pick a tool that handles that kind of complexity well. Or even handles it for you.

For example, some ESPs offer “Send Time Optimization”. This sends your email campaign to each recipient at the time when they are most likely to open it, based on previous openings of emails sent by you, or by others. It might sound like overkill, but it actually has a huge impact on your open rates, and on your bottom line.

It’s usually a good idea to use on-site behavior to segment your audience. Some ESPs also include marketing automation features to send emails automatically.

For example, Happy Garden, a furniture e-shop started sending follow-up emails one month after each purchase. They send and customize these emails automatically, based on the products purchased. This simple email increased their revenue by 7%.

What to look for in email marketing software for WordPress:

On-site integrations and the segmentation options they provide. How easy is it to access pageviews information? Products purchased information?

Conditional statements to personalize the emails for each recipient without technical knowledge.

Marketing automation features: can the platform send emails automatically based on given triggers? For example, X days after each purchase.

Depending on the plugins you’re using (woocommerce, bigcommerce, etc.), also check whether the ESP offers an integration. Some ESPs will offer to synchronize with your e-shop data. Think of product information for example: category, photos, availability, etc.

It can also be interesting to look for specific use-cases to ensure they’re easy to set up on the ESP you’re considering. Abandoned cart emails, welcome emails, or drip email sequences are all things you’re likely to implement at some point.

An ESP that works well with your WordPress list building tools

Many ESPs offer subscription forms. Be sure to check whether your ESP’s integration with WordPress allows you to integrate subscription forms easily. Is there any code involved? Can you customize the look and feel of your forms? Are you able to insert floating bars and the like through the ESP’s plugin?

You might already be using lead generation software like OptinMonster or HelloBar to grow your list. If you don’t already have a tool for capturing new subscribers, it could be good to sign up for one. Then you can find an email tool that has good integrations with the WordPress plugin you’re using for your list-building.

The main reason why close integration between list growth tools and email marketing software is so important is two-fold:

Ensure data-integrity: it is essential for your data to be accurate and consistent. Think of email addresses for example: how are they validated? Are you positive that every email address you collect is a real email address?

If you have several email addresses for the same person, do you just send out emails to every address you have? Do your subscribers have the option to choose what email address to receive different types of emails on?

These considerations are essential to proper segmentation and deliverability. They can become a nightmare very fast though. Picking an ESP that integrates closely with your list-building tools is a good way to ensure data-integrity.

Avoid data-duplication: Avoid moving around data as much as possible. The “moving around” part is usually where things go wrong. When duplicating data, you will end up with different data-sets. A close integration with your list-building plugins ensures some deduplication logic is in place. That way, you don’t have to deal with deduplication yourself.

Data, Privacy, GDPR and multi-list subscriptions

Data-privacy and data-protection are serious issues that should be dealt with properly. It is not okay to overlook these issues. When picking an ESP, you should make sure you sign up with a provider that has built-in functionality for GDPR.

GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is the latest EU regulation on data-privacy. Any company working with customers, visitors, or subscribers located in the EU can be liable if breaching that regulation.

GDPR requires you to inform users very clearly about what exactly they’re opting into when subscribing. Many marketers now break down subscription options to avoid the “all-or-nothing” approach.

Example of distributed subscription of your WordPress lists:Do you wish to subscribe to our newsletter?Do you wish to receive information about product updates, etc.?Do you wish to be notified of new resources when we publish them such as eBooks, infographics, etc.?

Multi-list subscriptions allow you to use simple opt-in checkboxes for each of these options. This allows users to properly opt into all of the lists that sound interesting without typing out their email for each form. This is becoming a best practice, and it’s a good idea to make sure your email marketing provider offers that option.

Double opt-in (asking for subscribers to confirm their subscription by email) is not a GDPR requirement. It is however generally a good idea to have this type of system so you can prove that your subscribers opted in.

In any case check if your ESP is GDPR compliant.

Landing page builder

It is very helpful if your ESP offers a drag & drop landing page builder. While your core pages and content can run on WordPress, in some cases, you might need to build a quick data-capture landing page:

You want to get your subscribers to opt-in to a specific marketing operation you’re running (BlackFriday discounts, etc.).

You want to grant specific access to some content or features (ex: download an eBook)

You want to run a referral program

Etc.

Essentially, anytime you want to try a specific marketing tactic, it saves you a lot of time to build a landing page connected to your ESP. It’s also very practical to use a drag and drop builder when you’re building a page outside of your brand identity for specific operations or events.

Transactional and marketing email in one WordPress email marketing platform

Transactional and marketing email might be very different to you, but to your subscribers, they’re just emails from you. For that reason, it’s important to ensure consistency across these two types of emails.

It is good to pick an email provider that offers both options from the same platform. This removes the headache of having to (de)duplicate your contacts over two different databases. Additionally, it helps keep consistent brand image and customer data.

Depending on the setup, marketers with little to no technical knowledge should be able to design and edit all emails rather easily. That’s where an intuitive email drag & drop editor tool comes in handy.

Above all else, the email provider you choose for your WordPress site should allow you to have complete flexibility. Having a solid WordPress integration and key features will definitely help. But your email strategy will likely evolve dramatically, and often, which makes flexibility the key feature to look for.

Most email service providers offer integrations for WordPress. But be sure to check how far the integration really goes, and whether you can use the same provider for both transactional and marketing emails. This will make your life (and those of your team) much easier in the long run as you scale and grow your business.

About Axel Lavergne

Axel Lavergne is a growth hacker and email marketer at SendinBlue. Sendinblue is a French Email Service Provider offering automation and multichannel marketing solutions – and an awesome wordpress plugin

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